The House of the Wolf
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Stanley Weyman >> The House of the Wolf
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Croisette began to shake all over. He clutched one of the
pillars, which bore up the porch, and pressed his face against
its cold surface, hiding his eyes from the sight. The worst had
come. In our hearts I think we had always fancied some accident
would save our friend, some stranger warn him.
"Oh, poor, poor Kit!" Croisette cried, bursting suddenly into
violent sobs. "Oh, Kit! Kit!"
CHAPTER X.
HAU, HAU, HUGUENOTS!
His late Majesty, Henry the Fourth, I remember--than whom no
braver man wore sword, who loved danger indeed for its own sake,
and courted it as a mistress--could never sleep on the night
before an action. I have heard him say himself that it was so
before the fight at Arques. Croisette partook of this nature
too, being high-strung and apt to be easily over-wrought, but
never until the necessity for exertion had passed away: while
Marie and I, though not a whit stouter at a pinch, were slower to
feel and less easy to move--more Germanic in fact.
I name this here partly lest it should be thought after what I
have just told of Croisette that there was anything of the woman
about him--save the tenderness; and partly to show that we acted
at this crisis each after his manner. While Croisette turned
pale and trembled, and hid his eyes, I stood dazed, looking from
the desolate house to the face stiffening in the sunshine, and
back again; wondering, though I had seen scores of dead faces
since daybreak, and a plenitude of suffering in all dreadful
shapes, how Providence could let this happen to us. To us! In
his instincts man is as selfish as any animal that lives.
I saw nothing indeed of the dead face and dead house after the
first convincing glance. I saw instead with hot, hot eyes the
old castle at home, the green fields about the brook, and the
grey hills rising from them; and the terrace, and Kit coming to
meet us, Kit with white face and parted lips and avid eyes that
questioned us! And we with no comfort to give her, no lover to
bring back to her!
A faint noise behind as of a sign creaking in the wind, roused me
from this most painful reverie. I turned round, not quickly or
in surprise or fear. Rather in the same dull wonder. The upper
part of the bookseller's door was ajar. It was that I had heard
opened. An old woman was peering out at us.
As our eyes met, she made a slight movement to close the door
again. But I did not stir, and seeming to be reassured by a
second glance, she nodded to me in a stealthy fashion. I drew a
step nearer, listlessly. "Pst! Pst!" she whispered. Her
wrinkled old face, which was like a Normandy apple long kept, was
soft with pity as she looked at Croisette. "Pst!"
"Well!" I said, mechanically.
"Is he taken?" she muttered.
"Who taken?" I asked stupidly.
She nodded towards the forsaken house, and answered, "The young
lord who lodged there? Ah! sirs," she continued, "he looked gay
and handsome, if you'll believe me, as he came from the king's
court yester even! As bonny a sight in his satin coat, and his
ribbons, as my eyes ever saw! And to think that they should be
hunting him like a rat to-day!"
The woman's words were few and simple. But what a change they
made in my world! How my heart awoke from its stupor, and leapt
up with a new joy and a new-born hope! "Did he get away?" I
cried eagerly. "Did he escape, mother, then?"
"Ay, that he did!" she replied quickly. "That poor fellow,
yonder--he lies quiet enough now God forgive him his heresy, say
I!--kept the door manfully while the gentleman got on the roof,
and ran right down the street on the tops of the houses, with
them firing and hooting at him: for all the world as if he had
been a squirrel and they a pack of boys with stones!"
"And he escaped?"
"Escaped!" she answered more slowly, shaking her old head in
doubt. "I do not know about that I fear they have got him by
now, gentlemen. I have been shivering and shaking up stairs with
my husband--he is in bed, good man, and the safest place for him
--the saints have mercy upon us! But I heard them go with their
shouting and gunpowder right along to the river, and I doubt they
will take him between this and the CHATELET! I doubt they will."
"How long ago was it, dame?" I cried.
"Oh! may be half an hour. Perhaps you are friends of his?" she
added questioningly.
But I did not stay to answer her. I shook Croisette, who had not
heard a word of this, by the shoulder. "There is a chance that he
has escaped!" I cried in his ear. "Escaped, do you hear?" And I
told him hastily what she had said.
It was fine, indeed, and a sight, to see the blood rush to his
cheeks, and the tears dry in his eyes, and energy and decision
spring to life in every nerve and muscle of his face, "Then there
is hope?" he cried, grasping my arm. "Hope, Anne! Come! Come!
Do not let us lose another instant. If he be alive let us join
him!"
The old woman tried to detain us, but in vain. Nay, pitying us,
and fearing, I think, that we were rushing on our deaths, she
cast aside her caution, and called after us aloud. We took no
heed, running after Croisette, who had not waited for our answer,
as fast as young limbs could carry us down the street. The
exhaustion we had felt a moment before when all seemed lost be it
remembered that we had not been to bed or tasted food for many
hours--fell from us on the instant, and was clean gone and
forgotten in the joy of this respite. Louis was living and for
the moment had escaped.
Escaped! But for how long? We soon had our answer. The moment
we turned the corner by the river-side, the murmur of a multitude
not loud but continuous, struck our ears, even as the breeze off
the water swept our cheeks. Across the river lay the thousand
roofs of the Ile de la Cite, all sparkling in the sunshine. But
we swept to the right, thinking little of THAT sight, and checked
our speed on finding ourselves on the skirts of the crowd.
Before us was a bridge--the Pont au Change, I think--and at its
head on our side of the water stood the CHATELET, with its hoary
turrets and battlements. Between us and the latter, and backed
only by the river, was a great open space half-filled with
people, mostly silent and watchful, come together as to a show,
and betraying, at present at least, no desire to take an active
part in what was going on.
We hurriedly plunged into the throng, and soon caught the clue to
the quietness and the lack of movement which seemed to prevail,
and which at first sight had puzzled us. For a moment the
absence of the dreadful symptoms we had come to know so well--the
flying and pursuing, the random blows, the shrieks and curses and
batterings on doors, the tipsy yells, had reassured us. But the
relief was short-lived. The people before us were under control.
A tighter grip seemed to close upon our hearts as we discerned
this, for we knew that the wild fury of the populace, like the
rush of a bull, might have given some chance of escape--in this
case as in others. But this cold-blooded ordered search left
none.
Every face about us was turned in the same direction; away from
the river and towards a block of old houses which stood opposite
to it. The space immediately in front of these was empty, the
people being kept back by a score or so of archers of the guard
set at intervals, and by as many horsemen, who kept riding up and
down, belabouring the bolder spirits with the flat of their
swords, and so preserving a line. At each extremity of this--more
noticeably on our left where the line curved round the angle of
the buildings--stood a handful of riders, seven in a group
perhaps. And alone in the middle of the space so kept clear,
walking his horse up and down and gazing at the houses rode a man
of great stature, booted and armed, the feather nodding in his
bonnet. I could not see his face, but I had no need to see it.
I knew him, and groaned aloud. It was Bezers!
I understood the scene better now. The horsemen, stern, bearded
Switzers for the most part, who eyed the rabble about them with
grim disdain, and were by no means chary of their blows, were all
in his colours and armed to the teeth. The order and discipline
were of his making: the revenge of his seeking. A grasp as of
steel had settled upon our friend, and I felt that his last
chance was gone. Louis de Pavannes might as well be lying on his
threshold with his dead servant by his side, as be in hiding
within that ring of ordered swords.
It was with despairing eyes we looked at the old wooden houses.
They seemed to be bowing themselves towards us, their upper
stories projected so far, they were so decrepit. Their roofs
were a wilderness of gutters and crooked gables, of tottering
chimneys and wooden pinnacles and rotting beams, Amongst these I
judged Kit's lover was hiding. Well, it was a good place for
hide and seek--with any other player than DEATH. In the ground
floors of the houses there were no windows and no doors; by
reason, I learned afterwards, of the frequent flooding of the
river. But a long wooden gallery raised on struts ran along the
front, rather more than the height of a man from the ground, and
access to this was gained by a wooden staircase at each end.
Above this first gallery was a second, and above that a line of
windows set between the gables. The block--it may have run for
seventy or eighty yards along the shore--contained four houses,
each with a door opening on to the lower gallery. I saw indeed
that but for the Vidame's precautions Louis might well have
escaped. Had the mob once poured helter-skelter into that
labyrinth of rooms and passages he might with luck have mingled
with them, unheeded and unrecognized, and effected his escape
when they retreated.
But now there were sentries on each gallery and more on the roof.
Whenever one of the latter moved or seemed to be looking inward--
where a search party, I understood, were at work--indeed, if he
did but turn his head, a thrill ran through the crowd and a
murmur arose, which once or twice swelled to a savage roar such
as earlier had made me tremble. When this happened the impulse
came, it seemed to me, from the farther end of the line. There
the rougher elements were collected, and there I more than once
saw Bezers' troopers in conflict with the mob. In that quarter
too a savage chant was presently struck up, the whole gathering
joining in and yelling with an indescribably appalling effect:
"Hau! Hau! Huguenots!
Faites place aux Papegots!"
in derision of the old song said to be popular amongst the
Protestants. But in the Huguenot version the last words were of
course transposed.
We had worked our way by this time to the front of the line, and
looking into one another's eyes, mutely asked a question; but not
even Croisette had an answer ready. There could be no answer but
one. What could we do? Nothing. We were too late. Too late
again! And yet how dreadful it was to stand still among the
cruel, thoughtless mob and see our friend, the touch of whose
hand we knew so well, done to death for their sport! Done to
death as the old woman had said like any rat, not a soul save
ourselves pitying him! Not a soul to turn sick at his cry of
agony, or shudder at the glance of his dying eyes. It was
dreadful indeed.
"Ah, well," muttered a woman beside me to her companion--there
were many women in the crowd--"it is down with the Huguenots, say
I! It is Lorraine is the fine man! But after all yon is a bonny
fellow and a proper, Margot! I saw him leap from roof to roof
over Love Lane, as if the blessed saints had carried him. And him
a heretic!"
"It is the black art," the other answered, crossing herself.
"Maybe it is! But he will need it all to give that big man the
slip to-day," replied the first speaker comfortably.
"That devil!" Margot exclaimed, pointing with a stealthy gesture
of hate at the Vidame. And then in a fierce whisper, with
inarticulate threats, she told a story of him, which made me
shudder. "He did! And she in religion too!" she concluded.
"May our Lady of Loretto reward him."
The tale might be true for aught I knew, horrible as it was! I
had heard similar ones attributing things almost as fiendish to
him, times and again; from that poor fellow lying dead on
Pavannes' doorstep for one, and from others besides. As the
Vidame in his pacing to and fro turned towards us, I gazed at him
fascinated by his grim visage and that story. His eye rested on
the crowd about us, and I trembled, lest even at that distance he
should recognise us.
And he did! I had forgotten his keenness of sight. His face
flashed suddenly into a grim smile. The tail of his eye resting
upon us, and seeming to forbid us to move, he gave some orders.
The colour fled from my face. To escape indeed was impossible,
for we were hemmed in by the press and could scarcely stir a
limb. Yet I did make one effort.
"Croisette!" I muttered he was the rearmost--"stoop down. He
may not have seen you. Stoop down, lad!"
But St. Croix was obstinate and would not stoop. Nay, when one
of the mounted men came, and roughly ordered us into the open, it
was Croisette who pushing past us stepped out first with a lordly
air. I, following him, saw that his lips were firmly compressed
and that there was an eager light in his eyes. As we emerged,
the crowd in our wake broke the line, and tried to pursue us;
either hostilely or through eagerness to see what it meant. But
a dozen blows of the long pikes drove them back, howling and
cursing to their places.
I expected to be taken to Bezers; and what would follow I could
not tell. But he did always it seemed what we least expected,
for he only scowled at us now, a grim mockery on his lip, and
cried, "See that they do not escape again! But do them no harm,
sirrah, until I have the batch of them!"
He turned one way, and I another, my heart swelling with rage.
Would he dare to harm us? Would even the Vidame dare to murder a
Caylus' nephew openly and in cold blood? I did not think so.
And yet--and yet--
Croisette interrupted the train of my thoughts. I found that he
was not following me. He had sprung away, and in a dozen strides
reached the Vidame's stirrup, and was clasping his knee when I
turned. I could not hear at the distance at which I stood, what
he said, and the horseman to whom Bezers had committed us spurred
between us. But I heard the Vidame's answer.
"No! no! no!" he cried with a ring of restrained fury in his
voice. "Let my plans alone! What do you know of them? And if
you speak to me again, M. St. Croix--I think that is your name,
boy--I will--no, I will not kill you. That might please you, you
are stubborn, I can see. But I will have you stripped and lashed
like the meanest of my scullions! Now go, and take care!"
Impatience, hate and wild passion flamed in his face for the
moment--transfiguring it. Croisette came back to us slowly,
white-lipped and quiet. "Never mind," I said bitterly. "The
third time may bring luck."
Not that I felt much indignation at the Vidame's insult, or any
anger with the lad for incurring it; as I had felt on that other
occasion. Life and death seemed to be everything on this
morning. Words had ceased to please and annoy, for what are
words to the sheep in the shambles? One man's life and one
woman's happiness outside ourselves we thought only of these now.
And some day I reflected Croisette might remember even with
pleasure that he had, as a drowning man clutching at straws,
stooped to a last prayer for them.
We were placed in the middle of a knot of troopers who closed the
line to the right. And presently Marie touched me. He was
gazing intently at the sentry on the roof of the third house from
us; the farthest but one. The man's back was to the parapet, and
he was gesticulating wildly.
"He sees him!" Marie muttered.
I nodded almost in apathy. But this passed away, and I started
involuntarily and shuddered, as a savage roar, breaking the
silence, rang along the front of the mob like a rolling volley of
firearms. What was it? A man posted at a window on the upper
gallery had dropped his pike's point, and was levelling it at
some one inside: we could see no more.
But those in front of the window could; they saw too much for the
Vidame's precautions, as a moment showed. He had not laid his
account with the frenzy of a rabble, the passions of a mob which
had tasted blood. I saw the line at its farther end waver
suddenly and toss to and fro. Then a hundred hands went up, and
confused angry cries rose with them. The troopers struck about
them, giving back slowly as they did so. But their efforts were
in vain. With a scream of triumph a wild torrent of people broke
through between them, leaving them stranded; and rushed in a
headlong cataract towards the steps. Bezers was close to us at
the time. "S'death!" he cried, swearing oaths which even his
sovereign could scarce have equalled. "They will snatch him from
me yet, the hell-hounds!"
He whirled his horse round and spurred him in a dozen bounds to
the stairs at our end of the gallery. There he leaped from him,
dropping the bridle recklessly; and bounding up three steps at a
time, he ran along the gallery. Half-a-dozen of the troopers
about us stayed only to fling their reins to one of their number,
and then followed, their great boots clattering on the planks.
My breath came fast and short, for I felt it was a crisis. It
was a race between the two parties, or rather between the Vidame
and the leaders of the mob. The latter had the shorter way to
go. But on the narrow steps they were carried off their feet by
the press behind them, and fell over and hampered one another and
lost time. The Vidame, free from this drawback, was some way
along the gallery before they had set foot on it.
How I prayed--amid a scene of the wildest uproar and excitement--
that the mob might be first! Let there be only a short conflict
between Bezers' men and the people, and in the confusion Pavannes
might yet escape. Hope awoke in the turmoil. Above the yells of
the crowd a score of deep voices about me thundered "a Wolf! a
Wolf!" And I too, lost my head, and drew my sword, and screamed
at the top of my voice, "a Caylus! a Caylus!" with the maddest.
Thousands of eyes besides mine were strained on the foremost
figures on either side. They met as it chanced precisely at the
door of the house. The mob leader was a slender man, I saw; a
priest apparently, though now he was girt with unpriestly
weapons, his skirts were tucked up, and his head was bare. So
much my first glance showed me. It was at the second look it was
when I saw the blood forsake his pale lowering face and leave it
whiter than ever, when horror sprang along with recognition to
his eyes, when borne along by the crowd behind he saw his
position and who was before him--it was only then when his mean
figure shrank, and he quailed and would have turned but could
not, that I recognized the Coadjutor.
I was silent now, my mouth agape. There are seconds which are
minutes; ay, and many minutes. A man may die, a man may come
into life in such a second. In one of these, it seemed to me,
those two men paused, face to face; though in fact a pause was
for one of them impossible. He was between--and I think he knew
it--the devil and the deep sea. Yet he seemed to pause, while
all, even that yelling crowd below, held their breath. The next
moment, glaring askance at one another like two dogs unevenly
coupled, he and Bezers shot shoulder to shoulder into the
doorway, and in another jot of time would have been out of sight.
But then, in that instant, I saw something happen. The Vidame's
hand flashed up above the priest's head, and the cross-hilt of
his sheathed sword crashed down with awful force, and still more
awful passion, on the other's tonsure! The wretch went down like
a log, without a word, without a cry! Amid a roar of rage from a
thousand throats, a roar that might have shaken the stoutest
heart, and blanched the swarthiest cheek, Bezers disappeared
within!
It was then I saw the power of discipline and custom. Few as
were the troopers who had followed him--a mere handful--they fell
without hesitation on the foremost of the crowd, who were already
in confusion, stumbling and falling over their leader's body; and
hurled them back pell-mell along the gallery. The throng below
had no firearms, and could give no aid at the moment; the stage
was narrow; in two minutes the Vidame's people had swept it clear
of the crowd and were in possession of it. A tall fellow took up
the priest's body, dead or alive, I do not know which, and flung
it as if it had been a sack of corn over the rail. It fell with
a heavy thud on the ground. I heard a piercing scream that rose
above that babel--one shrill scream! and the mob closed round
and hid the thing.
If the rascals had had the wit to make at once for the right-hand
stairs, where we stood with two or three of Bezers' men who had
kept their saddles, I think they might easily have disposed of
us, encumbered as we were, by the horses; and then they could
have attacked the handful on the gallery on both flanks. But the
mob had no leaders, and no plan of operations. They seized
indeed two or three of the scattered troopers, and tearing them
from their horses, wreaked their passion upon them horribly. But
most of the Switzers escaped, thanks to the attention the mob
paid to the houses and what was going forward on the galleries;
and these, extricating themselves joined us one by one, so that
gradually a little ring of stern faces gathered about the stair-
foot. A moment's hesitation, and seeing no help for it, we
ranged ourselves with them; and, unchecked as unbidden, sprang on
three of the led horses.
All this passed more quickly than I can relate it: so that
before our feet were well in the stirrups a partial silence, then
a mightier roar of anger at once proclaimed and hailed the re-
appearance of the Vidame. Bigoted beyond belief were the mob of
Paris of that day, cruel, vengeful, and always athirst for blood;
and this man had killed not only their leader but a priest. He
had committed sacrilege! What would they do? I could just, by
stooping forward, command a side view of the gallery, and the
scene passing there was such that I forgot in it our own peril.
For surely in all his reckless life Bezers had never been so
emphatically the man for the situation--had never shown to such
advantage as at this moment when he stood confronting the sea of
faces, the sneer on his lip, a smile in his eyes; and looked down
unblenching, a figure of scorn, on the men who were literally
agape for his life. The calm defiance of his steadfast look
fascinated even me. Wonder and admiration for the time took the
place of dislike. I could scarcely believe that there was not
some atom of good in this man so fearless. And no face but one
no face I think in the world, but one--could have drawn my eyes
from him. But that one face was beside him. I clutched Marie's
arm, and pointed to the bareheaded figure at Bezers' right hand.
It was Louis himself: our Louis de Pavannes, But he was changed
indeed from the gay cavalier I remembered, and whom I had last
seen riding down the street at Caylus, smiling back at us, and
waving his adieux to his mistress! Beside the Vidame he had the
air of being slight, even short. The face which I had known so
bright and winning, was now white and set. His fair, curling
hair--scarce darker than Croisette's--hung dank, bedabbled with
blood which flowed from a wound in his head. His sword was gone;
his dress was torn and disordered and covered with dust. His
lips moved. But he held up his head, he bore himself bravely
with it all; so bravely, that I choked, and my heart seemed
bursting as I looked at him standing there forlorn and now
unarmed. I knew that Kit seeing him thus would gladly have died
with him; and I thanked God she did not see him. Yet there was a
quietness in his fortitude which made a great difference between
his air and that of Bezers. He lacked, as became one looking
unarmed on certain death, the sneer and smile of the giant beside
him.
What was the Vidame about to do? I shuddered as I asked myself.
Not surrender him, not fling him bodily to the people? No not
that: I felt sure he would let no others share his vengeance
that his pride would not suffer that. And even while I wondered
the doubt was solved. I saw Bezers raise his hand in a peculiar
fashion. Simultaneously a cry rang sharply out above the tumult,
and down in headlong charge towards the farther steps came the
band of horsemen, who had got clear of the crowd on that side.
They were but ten or twelve, but under his eye they charged, as
if they had been a thousand. The rabble shrank from the
collision, and fled aside. Quick as thought the riders swerved;
and changing their course, galloped through the looser part of
the throng, and in a trice drew rein side by side with us, a
laugh and a jeer on their reckless lips.
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